I posed a rhetorical question in the title of this piece, and I'll ask it again; why are the Oriole youngsters struggling? Last night Chris Tillman lasted 2.2 innings and gave up eight runs. Not exactly the start he was looking for coming off of such a high from his start in Texas prior to the break. Tillman struggled with his command in the second and third innings, although he was fairly strong in the first. What I noticed was that there appeared to be very little late movement on his pitches. He lived in the middle of the plate, adding very little variety to his fastball. The Rays, having talented hitters, jumped on that to the tune of eight runs.
We saw similar control and command problems from Brian Matusz on Sunday afternoon against Toronto. Matusz said that he felt that he was yanking his arm too much up on the mound for whatever reason. I also noticed this with Tillman last night as he gave Tampa catcher John Jaso an RBI-walk in the third inning. Tillman pulled his right arm/shoulder way inside on the pitch that was ball four, and fired it well wide of the strike zone. So why is this happening? I think it goes back to the fact that first off these guys are all still very young. A lot of fans like to conveniently forget that part. Unfortuantely we have Stephen Strasbourg right down the pike from us, and even in his "bad starts" he seemingly can't touch anything that doesn't turn to gold. (He shut out the Marlins 4-0 last Friday night, but everyone conveniently forgets to mention that he needed 34 pitches to get out of the first inning.) The young Oriole pitchers have all been getting a crash course of how to pitch during their training.
It's probably fair to say that the expectations put on these guys prior to the season might have been a bit over-extended per se. However with that said, Jake Arrieta stayed in the minors a bit longer than Matusz, Tillman, and Bergesen, and he's been more effective in his brief period with the team. So is Arrieta the only true stud of the bunch, or were the others rushed up to the majors. Of the four, Arrieta has the best late-movement on his pitches and he throws the hardest. Matusz probably runs a close second, but the advantage that Matusz has over the rest of them is that he's a southpaw. Nevertheless, I also believe that it's healthy for a young pitcher to go through what Tillman went through last night against Tampa, and Matusz on Sunday against Toronto. It gives the pitcher a chance to sit down later with his pitching coach and review the film. The coach will then go over mechanically what the pitcher did wrong, and try to help him to fix the problem. Nobody likes to get shelled, however in the future those meetings with the pitching coach might resonate in that pitcher's head so he thus might be better equipped to recongize when he's starting to tail into the same rut.
As I said, nobody likes to get shelled. But it happens, and I hope that most fans are able to accept that for what it is. In the case of last night's game, I would say that Matt Albers pitched a great few innings in relief, only giving up one base hit. So even in an 8-1 drubbing, there's one small blonde ray of sunshine. That may not be what some people want to hear necessarily, but what's the alternative...dying in despair?!
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